One little thing that you may not know about me is that I can't hear very well from my left ear. I'm almost deaf on that side, actually. When I was about 6yrs old, they put little tiny itty bitty tubes on my eardrums. When they took the left one out, they tore it badly enough for me to gradually lose my hearing.
I remember very vividly the times before the surgery, it was totally needed. The only noticeable consequence of it is my need to sit or lean my head favoring my right ear. I mostly walk to the left of people when I really want to listen to our conversation. It makes for an interesting experiment when I listen to song tracks that differentiate their mix between the left and right sides. It has forced me to maybe pay more attention to the things I hear.
As a child, I was brought up in a very musical house. My grandmother sang and played the piano. My grandfather is a guitar virtuoso. And well, my mother, aunts and uncles can play some very mean keys.
My grandmother wanted me to play the Violin. And they tried, hard, but I think the math part of it all escaped me. I could never figure it out, preferring to just play piano pieces by ear. It was a more organic hobby anyways, something to do to wind down after school, gymnastics and swimming. Something to do when I got bored.
For about 10 years, I lived in a house where I would listen to opera everyday, Chopin, Bach and Beethoven while taking my bath. I was probably the only kid in my 1st grade class that knew who Tchaikovsky was. Or Vivaldi.
I can still play the two hands of Fur Elise by memory, if I practice a day or two. It won't be perfect and I'll probably stall and grouch over the keys, much to my grandmother's chagrin. It was her, as you've probably read in many of my blogs, who pushed the artistic agenda on me. I really feel that whenever I want to remember the Freedom parts of my childhood, they all revolved around all of the artistic things I did with her.
For example; we would write a short story or a poem, read it, make a song for it, paint a canvas for it, make a radio show by recording our voices in my grandfather's casette player. It wasn't until we had probably exhausted the expressions that could come out of it, that we would move on to another thing. She also loved to entertain in the thought that she was Agatha Christie. She had all of her books, lined and used so much that they were falling apart.
Another thing she did, with quite an amount of talent, was making her own clothes. She even had particular colors assigned to each day of the week. I sort of remember that she wore Lilac on Mondays. Though I could be wrong. According to my mom, it had something to do with her Metaphysic's practice.
And I think a mix of all of that stuck to me, in more weird ways than one. It struck me tonight while listening to Ella Fitzgerald and some Chet Baker. I suddenly felt like I was inappropriately dressed to be listening to them. I shouldn't be wearing this rainbow colored t-shirt from Old Navy or these low riding faded jeans that have seen better days.
For some reason, I felt I should either change into a gauzy blouse, a softer look compared to this teenaged look I'm sporting today, or just stop listening and change stations to Incubus or some other alternative rock that would match what I wear. And then another realization.
For the last 3 years, I have rarely listened to Jazz, or Big Bands... and my closet is 80% dominated by my collection of T-shirts, I have more pairs of Converse than I care to admit, and I own more jeans than I can honestly wear. Coincidentally, my iTunes playlists have more rock, alternative and such, than any classical or old age.
Before this took over, back in my time in Venezuela, I remember that my friend Luisa and I would go to our friend Diego's beach house for the weekend or escape on the odd Wednesday. We'd let the whole of my Louis Armstrong collection play through, drink wine and eat moroccan food. Fall asleep analyzing every single detail about indie movies we'd seen. We'd talk about the latest play, the latest designer show we'd gone, our over the top ideas of how our fictional weddings would be. I still had my Converse shoes back then, but most of my wardrobe consisted on things that were more conventionally feminine, or more my age for sure.
I also had a very solid paycheck, a "9 to you name it" job, an apartment of my own... all trapped in the conflicted little world I didn't want to live in.
Now, don't get me wrong. I loved those parts of my life where I escaped the chaos of living in Caracas, but it was like having a production designer come up with a posh and dramatic scheme for my life when I was starring on a SciFi movie. And right now, I'm beginning to feel the same way, only backwards.
Right now, my life feels as if my production designer created a whole scheme for "Reality Bites" and I'm actually starring (or feeling like I should be) in "Amelie" or "Love Actually" or some other middle aged movie, with some french music in the background. I had to firmly accept today that I live my life like a whole production and when something is not fitting right, the music inappropriate for this scene, it will always bother me. Like someone doing an Irish accent when they're supposed to be from Puerto Rico.
There are moments when I have the opportunity to climb on the heels that I've still managed to keep or afford. Those Diane Von Furstenberg that winked their eye to me and I couldn't resist, regardless of the fact that I ate ramen and canned soup while wearing them around my house. I felt girlier, cared and somewhat more like me for those 30 minutes. I entertained the idea of owning eventually 20 pairs of them. I'd strut them while hearing Coltrane's tunes softly around me. Would that be the perfect constructed and produced story, put into all the expressions that I could tell it by?
And I wonder if she felt at the end of her life like her scene was working properly; tied up and neat in a harmony that played without any instrument being dissonant. Maybe that's why she made her own clothes and rode the wave at her own accord, when her own resources and scenarios were so limited. She'd probably say, knowing her as much as I had the opportunity to do, that she was probably lacking a bit of sparkle, but that she would hold back, for the sake of demureness.
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Maria Magdalena Mata Foucault De Damas (1929 - 1993) French/Spanish and then Venezuelan. A former elementary school teacher that dedicated her life to raise her five children in the eastern oil town of El Tigre. She was part of the incipient educated community of the town, contributing under a 'nom de plume' with poems and short stories to the local newspaper. She also painted a oil on canvas every week and her works were celebrated in a hall named after her a year after her passing at the Lyon's Club, by her friends and family.
A short bio for someone that spoke and meant a lot more than that.
September 14, 2012
September 11, 2012
Why are you calling me?
Back in my college days, my best friend Rebecca had it in for me when it came to breaking news. She feared that when she picked up the phone and the first thing I said was: "Dude..."She was in for the report of casualties.
In some way, I used to joke, we were the youngest 80 year olds I knew. I imagined that these were the calls that old friends make to each other when people around them start passing away. Folks that have lived their lives good and plenty, full of experiences and memories, and many of them lucky enough to pass away peacefully in their sleep. Smiles on their wrinkled and seasoned faces.
At least that's how I picture my friends going away. After a long time in this planet. After I've had the chance to party too much with them. After I have too many stories about them to remember them all in one sitting. After I almost feel that we're all good and ready to transcend to other adventures.
That day, September 11th 2001, I was 19 years old. Writing that just now automatically made me feel as old as a raisin. But its true, it has been 11 years since that morning.
Back then, Venezuela still shared the same time zone of New York City. This was before Chavez decided that it made a lot of sense to disappear 30 minutes out of the lives of us Venezuelans. I was still at my parent's place, in the beach town of Lecheria, on the last leg of my summer break from College.
I remember very vividly the sensation as my dad barged into my room, with my mom trailing close behind, flipping on my 19" TV and saying: "It's there a way to record this?!?" It was just past 8:50am. Flight 11 had just struck 1WTC.
In my still sleep induced drunk state, my first instinct had been to grab my cordless and dial Rebecca's house phone. She would be asleep. She would be pissed. I knew I was bound for some cursing coming down my end. She'd shut up the minute that she'd turn on the TV, I said to myself. Her Chinese grams picked up, woke her up in that scream that only Chinese people can feel as a caring tone, and she groggily said: "Chama, its 8am..." A foul groan followed. "What's going onnnnn?!?" She was so disgruntled.
"Dude. Get up. Turn on Venevision, or RCTV or whatever, CNN, FOX News, something!" I said, not even giving her the chance to object to the fact that I was calling her from 800 Kms away to invite her to a impromptu TV session.
As she flipped thru the channels, trying to land in something she understood, I heard the gasp and the confusion.
"A plane, dude." There was silence and then the filtered noise of her TV set. "A plane."
What followed was a string of 'How's' and 'Why's'... and then 'Who's'.
Violence was no stranger to us, being brought up in a country on the verge of a civil war, and remembering clearly the effects of terrorism. But this was of such dimension that we couldn't, and I think no one could ever, wrap their minds around the fact that such act could be in fact planned and executed.
As we watched together, and the journalists tried to make sense of something that would never have it, we both spotted the second plane lining up to hit 2 WTC. In micro seconds, we saw that black shadow come from the right top corner of our screens and then disappear in a ball of fire behind a building I had just visited 3 years before. It was a combined blabber of syllables, a mix of "Wait, is that.. -- what... no..." That ended with a scream coming from my mom's bedroom.
There was also an expletive that came from Rebecca's side of the line.
If we had any doubts that this was intentional, they had just dissipated. If we had hope and certainty of the world we were living in, that also went out the window. I didn't need to know if the Mayans were right and December 2012 was the end of the world. For me, end of the world as I knew it had started that day.
From that moment on, until both towers collapsed, all we could wonder was the scope of reality that this brought on. What this meant. What now would become of a nation that wasn't even ours but, at the same time, nationality meant nothing. Not only because, as it would turn out, there were many nations that lost their sons and daughters that day, but also because in the grand scheme of things, this just was a huge hit on humanity. It would become the moment where not only we saw the worst, but also the best. And it hit me that something like this would have to happen for us to figure that out.
It's been 11 years, and yes, we have changed, we have learned. The pain might not the same, but not lesser. While the crisis might have passed, we now deal with the aftermath, with all the good and the bad it brought to all.
And you may think, so many people have also died in wars around the globe, why don't those make people have these outbursts of very vocal reflections about such tragedies? Why don't we get woken up with urgency when a bomb goes off in Palestine or Israel? What about the thousands of different types of tragedies we flip through every year? Does it need to be this extraordinary, and so out of the norm that it could only be dreamed in some SciFi Conspiracy TV show?
Were we more sensitive before 9/11? is that what it is?
Rebecca, I wish I hadn't called you that day to tell you that almost three thousand people were about to die. I wish we hadn't seen them as they went, on images that I wished were part of some daunting apocalyptic movie or video game. What I won't regret though, is having you at the end of the line. Because even in that moment when I felt that really the world was falling apart, you were there. Sobbing with me, sniffling and in muted silences only broken by a million questions.
Those people had plans that went past that morning. I don't quite remember what was the image of what my future would had been before that moment. I try hard, but that split moment made it all go away.
Perhaps some day, the tally of triumphs of good deeds, peace, understanding, forgiveness and love will outnumber the tally of suffering we humans subject ourselves to. Perhaps it's true. The best that you can do is to Not Forget. But maybe do give a chance to Forgive.
In some way, I used to joke, we were the youngest 80 year olds I knew. I imagined that these were the calls that old friends make to each other when people around them start passing away. Folks that have lived their lives good and plenty, full of experiences and memories, and many of them lucky enough to pass away peacefully in their sleep. Smiles on their wrinkled and seasoned faces.
At least that's how I picture my friends going away. After a long time in this planet. After I've had the chance to party too much with them. After I have too many stories about them to remember them all in one sitting. After I almost feel that we're all good and ready to transcend to other adventures.
That day, September 11th 2001, I was 19 years old. Writing that just now automatically made me feel as old as a raisin. But its true, it has been 11 years since that morning.
Back then, Venezuela still shared the same time zone of New York City. This was before Chavez decided that it made a lot of sense to disappear 30 minutes out of the lives of us Venezuelans. I was still at my parent's place, in the beach town of Lecheria, on the last leg of my summer break from College.
I remember very vividly the sensation as my dad barged into my room, with my mom trailing close behind, flipping on my 19" TV and saying: "It's there a way to record this?!?" It was just past 8:50am. Flight 11 had just struck 1WTC.
In my still sleep induced drunk state, my first instinct had been to grab my cordless and dial Rebecca's house phone. She would be asleep. She would be pissed. I knew I was bound for some cursing coming down my end. She'd shut up the minute that she'd turn on the TV, I said to myself. Her Chinese grams picked up, woke her up in that scream that only Chinese people can feel as a caring tone, and she groggily said: "Chama, its 8am..." A foul groan followed. "What's going onnnnn?!?" She was so disgruntled.
"Dude. Get up. Turn on Venevision, or RCTV or whatever, CNN, FOX News, something!" I said, not even giving her the chance to object to the fact that I was calling her from 800 Kms away to invite her to a impromptu TV session.
As she flipped thru the channels, trying to land in something she understood, I heard the gasp and the confusion.
"A plane, dude." There was silence and then the filtered noise of her TV set. "A plane."
What followed was a string of 'How's' and 'Why's'... and then 'Who's'.
Violence was no stranger to us, being brought up in a country on the verge of a civil war, and remembering clearly the effects of terrorism. But this was of such dimension that we couldn't, and I think no one could ever, wrap their minds around the fact that such act could be in fact planned and executed.
As we watched together, and the journalists tried to make sense of something that would never have it, we both spotted the second plane lining up to hit 2 WTC. In micro seconds, we saw that black shadow come from the right top corner of our screens and then disappear in a ball of fire behind a building I had just visited 3 years before. It was a combined blabber of syllables, a mix of "Wait, is that.. -- what... no..." That ended with a scream coming from my mom's bedroom.
There was also an expletive that came from Rebecca's side of the line.
If we had any doubts that this was intentional, they had just dissipated. If we had hope and certainty of the world we were living in, that also went out the window. I didn't need to know if the Mayans were right and December 2012 was the end of the world. For me, end of the world as I knew it had started that day.
From that moment on, until both towers collapsed, all we could wonder was the scope of reality that this brought on. What this meant. What now would become of a nation that wasn't even ours but, at the same time, nationality meant nothing. Not only because, as it would turn out, there were many nations that lost their sons and daughters that day, but also because in the grand scheme of things, this just was a huge hit on humanity. It would become the moment where not only we saw the worst, but also the best. And it hit me that something like this would have to happen for us to figure that out.
It's been 11 years, and yes, we have changed, we have learned. The pain might not the same, but not lesser. While the crisis might have passed, we now deal with the aftermath, with all the good and the bad it brought to all.
And you may think, so many people have also died in wars around the globe, why don't those make people have these outbursts of very vocal reflections about such tragedies? Why don't we get woken up with urgency when a bomb goes off in Palestine or Israel? What about the thousands of different types of tragedies we flip through every year? Does it need to be this extraordinary, and so out of the norm that it could only be dreamed in some SciFi Conspiracy TV show?
Were we more sensitive before 9/11? is that what it is?
Rebecca, I wish I hadn't called you that day to tell you that almost three thousand people were about to die. I wish we hadn't seen them as they went, on images that I wished were part of some daunting apocalyptic movie or video game. What I won't regret though, is having you at the end of the line. Because even in that moment when I felt that really the world was falling apart, you were there. Sobbing with me, sniffling and in muted silences only broken by a million questions.
Those people had plans that went past that morning. I don't quite remember what was the image of what my future would had been before that moment. I try hard, but that split moment made it all go away.
Perhaps some day, the tally of triumphs of good deeds, peace, understanding, forgiveness and love will outnumber the tally of suffering we humans subject ourselves to. Perhaps it's true. The best that you can do is to Not Forget. But maybe do give a chance to Forgive.